Please Help

I recently purchased a Gainward 5900 FX 256 meg Golden Sample video card. After instalation I did notice better image quality. However the card is just not living up to it's much touted reputation. In GP4 my PO% around Monza is virtually the same as with my old Geforce 2 Ultra 64 meg DDR card. My PO% in GP3 is similarly unimproved. Dare I say it, but, in F1 2002 I actually had a better frame rate with my old card (yes, I'm an F1 sim slut). I have contacted the retailer (I bought the card on line) and they tell me that my system is slowing the card down, that I need to upgrade my mobo, processor, and memory. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

System specs are as follows:

P4 1.7 gig oc'd to 1.84
Asus P4T mobo
Antec 400 watt power supply
SB Audigy Gamer sound card
WD 80 gig HD 8 meg cache
512 megs Rambus


Thanks in advance,

FraPP!!!

PO was less affected by Video Card. My best bet was about 25%-35% from total overall performances. You need better CPU and if possible better sound card to balancing optimal GP4 performances.

PO = Processor Occupancy, not Video Card occupancy.

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In reality, doesn't matter who's right but most important is who's left.

Madman,

Thanks for the reply. I know that PO = processor occupancy, but, I was under the impression that a high end card would relieve some of the video processing burden from the processor. My mother board is AGP 4X and the card is 8X. Does that make a big difference? The retailer says that I need a gig of ram for this card. Does that sound right?

Thank you,

FraPP!!!

Quote:
My mother board is AGP 4X and the card is 8X. Does that make a big difference?

Your system will use lesser spec, in this case running with AGP 4x. But this is not enough. You need to ensure they was running correctly in 4x using some benchmark tool. Sometimes chipset driver use default or normal AGP mode (usually 2x) for safer system stability.

Quote:
The retailer says that I need a gig of ram for this card.


Not entirely correct.
Expanding system memory, YES, will increasing overal system performances (not just for gaming), but they only give small affects on slower IO devices usage. If you playing games with highest possibility of texture details, you also need higher video card memory. Today video card use their video memory to store post-processing textures, 3D data (vertices, rendering cache, vertex and pixel processing cache, etc). Sometimes when video memory cannot hold additional data, they will use system memory. This mean, when you had small system memory or lesser speed, may decrease gaming performances.

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In reality, doesn't matter who's right but most important is who's left.

Madman,

Again thanks for the help.

FraPP!!!